You know them, they are in the stadium every week for every game. They go to the extremes and very often they make a huge mess, we call them “sick fanatic sports fans” or simply hooligans. The problem with those people is not that they are stupid but that their stupidity affects the rest of us – the normal people.

This issue may not seem big of a deal but it illustrates at it’s best how stupid some people really are and what they are capable of doing because of their lack of brains.

In this article I will try to tell you how idiotic is everything related to those guys, analyze their behavior, ask some questions and explain my point on how to deal with such people.

I like sports, I’m a sports fan. There is nothing wrong in being supporter of a team or an athlete. But there is a line between being a fan and supporter and being an idiotic sick supporter with no life other than pretending to be a die hard fan. Usually such people turn into fanatics and hooligans. And that is something really bad.

To be clear. Sports and sporting events are not the reason why many supporters turn into hooligans and fanatics, sports are the excuse (on conscious or unconscious level). They offer great conditions and great environment for idiots to show who they really are. Mass events are more difficult to control, people are heavily controlled by emotions and the chances of someone getting a hard punishment for something he has done during the mass event are much less (just like in street protests).

But sporting events have another angle that brings additional heat. It’s a competition. It’s me vs you. It’s one group of people who has identified itself with the one side vs another group of people who has identified with the other side. And because those fans don’t have anything more significant to live for, that’s their life’s battle.

You see, every human has certain secondary psychological needs other than the biological needs we all have. And some of those needs are to have certain identity, to belong to a certain group and to “compete” with the other groups, because you need. When your favorite football teams win, it’s your win. That’s the easy way for someone to get that feeling of winning. When you have no other area in your life where you have chance to compete and win, you become a sick sports fan. But that’s not enough to become fanatic. It’s self destructive, but you don’t harm other people.

Fanatics harm other people because on top of their lack of meaningful productive life and sports obsession, they have stronger need to fight, they have stronger need of significance, they have anger, they hate the different and that’s why they use every opportunity they find to use violence, because violence is the easiest way to unleash your anger, to fight, to feel significant and to harm those that you hate.

This video show how fans of Besiktas and Galatasaray went on the field to fight during a football game in Turkey:

Plain stupidity is the main reason this exists. And it’s not going away.
Unfortunately in many areas of the world people are not able to enjoy sports as they should because of that.